


this is what salvation looks like

by ObviouslyAnonymous



Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Kinda crack fic, Reader is kinda a mermaid but not really, an ultimate angst train, definitely not period accurate dialogue, intrusive A/B/O thoughts, nobody ever gave Lancelot the fey sex talk, reader has panic attacks, that's the plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:34:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25905160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObviouslyAnonymous/pseuds/ObviouslyAnonymous
Summary: “You did something to me, enchanted me somehow,” He hisses, leveling the tip of the blade to your throat and you lean away from him, the rush of angry Alpha pheromones making you want to cower and run.You bare your teeth in a snarl, clenching your fists and leaning forward now, into the blade, feeling the sharp tip ghost against your skin. “I did something to you?”Gods he must have some balls saying that. Blaming you, the victim? You’ll flay off his skin and turn him into a rug at the implication alone. Your inner Omega seems to agree, her hackles rising as well.“You’re the one,” you bite out slowly, enunciating every letter with utmost care, “who just bonded us together for life!”
Relationships: The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)/You
Comments: 34
Kudos: 176





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where this is going but I couldn't help myself!
> 
> Basically the Fae are A/B/O and the humans aren't. This is not common knowledge among humans. And so our boy Lancelot has no fucking idea what's going on and why he feels this urge to bite your neck, throw you onto the nearest horizontal surface, and have his way with you.

The Paladin drags you across the grass by your hair, scalp burning. You kick and scream and pull to run away but another Paladin comes up to slap you hard across the face, and the sting of it subdues you long enough for him to drag you towards your destination.

“Another one for you, Father Carden.” Your attacker says, dropping you unceremoniously in front of an older man, clearly the leader of the massacre. Carden’s face is unnervingly normal, almost kind looking, but his eyes give him away. Soulless brown eyes that betray the monster underneath his skin.

The Paladins dump another beside you and you turn to see Nimue, her hands tied behind her back, and the two of you share the same haunted, terrified look. The two of you had never been as close as she and Pym but you were definitely friends, and you’d been pleased when she had been chosen as the next Summoner for the village. She’s the strongest out of anyone in the village in terms of her magical ability, she had _deserved_ the position.

“See this, brothers?” Carden says to the crowd of gathered Paladins, gesturing between you and Nimue before taking your chin in his grip and forcing you to look up at him. “This is why we must be strong.” His thumb caresses your cheek and your gut churns with revulsion. “He will take forms… that will tear our hearts.”

You think about biting his thumb off but doubt that it would get you anywhere.

“Such eyes… Yet infected just the same.”

He looks over to another Paladin, this one dressed differently than the others, in dark robes with a hood pulled up over his head. Two swords with matching red hilts strapped to his sides.

Carden steps back just as the dark-robed Paladin steps forward, hauling you up to your feet and pushing you towards a wood cross, a length of rope in his hand. You’re smart enough to know what will happen next.

You hear what sounds like Nimue screaming your name but it sounds dull, like the noise is traveling through water.

All you can focus on are the three girls from your village are already burning, their crosses all in a neat, straight line.

Aside from the smoke, the sky is a brilliant blue. It’s a picturesque late summer day. Their hair is still waving in the breeze even though their screams have ceased.

_That’s going to be me._

The heart stopping panic overwhelms you all at once.

_Run run run run run run run run run run—_

You shake yourself out of his grip, frantic because you can’t think of a single worse way to die than by fire. You don’t make it much farther than a few inches, as his hand snakes around your waist and he pulls you back to the wood cross, looking every bit like the god of death himself with his dark robes and uncompromising expression.

“We should give thanks, my brothers, for this opportunity to show our resolve in the face of such treachery!” Carden preaches, his voice carrying across the clearing. He continues on with his speech but you tune out, your attention drawn to your own predicament.

The dark-robed Paladin tugs your arm up to begin tying you to the cross, the blood on his leather gloves smearing onto the rope and your skin.

“You don’t have to do this,” you whisper to the Paladin, searching for any sign of life in his eyes. Your heart is hammering in your chest and you’re just barely preventing yourself from hyperventilating because this _needs_ to work, if he doesn’t let you go then the others will light the cross on fire and you’ll burn.

The Paladin’s jaw clenches but he doesn’t even look at you, doesn’t even acknowledge your existence. His expression is carefully blank, his movements stiff and practiced.

“You don’t even have to let me live,” you try to bargain, growing increasingly desperate as the acrid and nauseatingly sweet smell of burning flesh turns your stomach, “just loosen your grip and I’ll run and you can cut me down any way you like as long as it’s quick.”

Yesterday you’d swam in the lake and picked wildflowers and herbs and baked bread and laughed with your friends and now you’re begging the man about to burn you alive to slit your throat instead.

“Please,” you beg, your voice breaking.

He moves to tie your other wrist but you grip that bare patch of skin just above his own where his leather gloves end and the sleeve of his robes begin _because you want him to look at you_ , to acknowledge your existence, to recognize you as a person and not a _thing_ he can dehumanize because the reality of his actions are too inconvenient, too horrible, to be faced as truth.

But the words you were about to say die on your lips because as soon as you touch him the breeze changes, the thick, overbearing smell of smoke parting to make way for fir trees and leather. And when the scent of it hits your nose that spot at the back of your neck that you had always ignored begins to pulse.

The earth shifts on its axis, your entire world completely rearranged in the blink of an eye. You look at the Paladin, dumbfounded, because _no, no, no, this can’t be right. He can’t be your—_

But that awakened primal instinct doesn’t care about who he is, what you are, or what he’s about to do to you. It croons “ _Alpha”_ in your ear all the same.

His eyes are as wide as yours, shock overcoming his blank expression, and he wrenches himself away from you like he’s been burned.

Did he feel it too? Your thoughts race with the implication but—

A sharp hiss parts the air. The cross wobbles as an arrow digs into the wood, in the exact spot his head had just been moments before.

“Fey archers to the north!” A Paladin yells to your right. As the red cloaks move into some sort of fighting position, screaming war cries tumble out of the forest and into the clearing.

Warriors from a neighboring clan fall upon the Paladins like a crashing wave. Steel meets steel and the clearing rapidly descends into chaos, overrun with bodies and fire and smoke.

As soon as the dark-robed Paladin turns his back on you to parry what would have been a fatal blow by a Fey swordsman, you run. Whatever he might be to you is inconsequential right now.

The fighting is thick, and no one tries to stop you as you weave through the battle, making a bee line for the trees.You try to find Nimue, the only friendly face you’re certain is alive, but she’s impossible to find amidst all the fighting, so you steel your resolve and decide you’re better off going off on your own rather than sticking around to look for her and inevitably getting yourself killed, or, you think of the dark-robed Paldin— _worse_.

As you navigate through the village-turned-battlefield, you become acutely aware of the fact that you’re completely unarmed. The Paladins, for their part, seem armed to the teeth. Swords hang on each of their belts, with some reaching down to grab a dagger strapped to their ankle or with two handed maces or axes strapped to their backs.

One of the Paladins stalks toward a young boy, younger than you, and the predatory grin on his face as he thrusts his sword tells you more than you need to know about the sort of man that puts on that red cloak.

It’s entirely different from the battles you’d heard of in stories, with neat formations and clear lines of infantrymen and cavalry. In the stories the battles always had a certain underlying structure to them, certain rules of engagement. Certain groups advanced while others retreated, and commanding officers barked out orders. This is complete chaos, and there are no rules and there are no battle formations, there’s only screaming and death and blood.

_But this isn’t a battle_ , you remind yourself, ducking as you’re nearly beheaded by the backswing of a mounted Paladin, his torso and the head of his horse covered in armor and chain mail, _this is a massacre_.

_Run run run run run—_

You only allow yourself the luxury of a brief pause to search for a weapon once you’re on the fringes of the fighting. The corpses of the fallen are ripe for the picking, so you snag the first dagger you see off of a Paladin’s belt and loiter just long enough to find the first intact bow you see, filling a stray quiver with as many arrows as you can find.

You’re still running even as the sun dips below on the horizon, the colors of the sunset casting the forest in shades of red and gold. Over the hours you’ve walked the forest has changed considerably, the trees growing taller, thicker, their branches twisted and gnarled with age. The sight of the old growth doesn’t make you uneasy, even as the colors of the sunset dull and the forest grows darker.

The forest is familiar in a way that nothing else is, before the Sky Folk had found you, you had survived on your own in the forest for weeks on end, and even when Nimue’s mother, Lenore, had set you up in a spare hut in the village, you spent most of your time in the forest. You had never been like the other children, you didn’t know their language at first, or their games and songs and so you’d never been able to get close to any of them.

Nimue and Pym, are, of course, an exception. Nimue had been outcasted because of her run in with that dark god and Pym had been slowly pushed out of the village’s social circles due to her friendship with Nimue, and so the three of you had all fit in well together.

You’d seen plenty of tragedy before you were found by the Sky Folk. But very few things you could encounter in this forest would strike more fear in your heart than a red cloak and a wooden cross, after today. That had been murder for _sport_ , its aim annihilation.

A horrible thought crosses your thoughts. You hadn’t seen anyone else escape into the trees, had Pym and Nimue—

You shove all of those thoughts aside. Your focus right now has to be survival, not worrying over questions you don’t know the answers to.

You pick a tree with thick, low-lying limbs and climb it until you’re about twenty, twenty five paces up in the air. You wedge yourself between a few branches, ensuring you won’t fall out in your sleep.

It takes hours before the exhaustion overtakes you, but eventually you fall asleep.

* * *

You wake to the sound of footsteps and cracking twigs. You press your back further against the tree and with care to make your movements as soft as possible, you inch yourself to a standing position. Ever so slowly, you take an arrow out of your quiver and ready your bow, peering around the trunk to face the source of the sound.

The figure is wearing dark robes, his horse tied to a tree a few paces away, walking through the forest with purpose. And you can tell by the way he moves that he could be entirely quiet if he wished, he _wants_ to make noise, he _wants_ to be noticed.

“Born in the dawn,” he says, loud enough to carry through the woods.

“To pass in the twilight,” you say, jumping down from your perch in the tree, landing in a crouch and standing, nocking your arrow in your bow and aiming it at this stranger.

He whirls around at the sound of your landing and you see the strong jaw under his cloak and the ash marks under his eyes and rear back, your tentative optimism wilting like a flower under the late-summer heat.

“ _You_ ,”

“I won’t hurt you,” he says cautiously, raising his hands into the air, taking slow steps toward you to close the distance.

Your lips curl. “That sounds like a lie.”

And then he moves as quick as lightning, forcing your bow up in the air. You let the arrow fly before he can move it too far past its target, and it firmly lodges into his shoulder. He doesn’t react to the pain at all, tearing the bow out of your hands and into the grass. In one breath he has you pushed against the same tree you slept in the night before, one hand pinning your wrists above your head while the other moves across his shoulder to tear the arrow out, throwing into the grass beside your bow.

He doesn’t even look _winded_.

“It was.”

He isn’t wearing gloves this time, and the heat of his bare fingers so close to the gland on the back of your neck fills you with unwanted heat. You feel yourself flush, your heart skipping a beat from something other than fear, which you immediately hate yourself for. The forest is quiet aside from the sound of both of your quick breathing, and you pay closer attention now to the features underneath the hood, noticing the stubble along his jaw and upper lip, the straight nose and high cheekbones—

You shift your thighs, suddenly uncomfortable and wanting friction, but he only presses you harder against the tree. “I-I will ask you questions,” the dark-robed Paladin starts, scowling. “And if you lie to me, I will know it.”

His grip on your throat tightens just a fraction, enough to get his point across. “And I will hurt you.”

“Truly, you have such an elegant way with words, milord,” you sneer, turning your nose up at him, tone haughty to hide the fact that you’re _terrified_.

Because you don’t know anything and if he was looking for intelligence on the Fey then he tracked down the absolute worst person in your village to do it. As an outsider to the tribe you had never been particularly clued into any Sky Folk secrets or hiding places.

And you notice that even as he threatens you he doesn’t look you directly in the eyes, avoiding your gaze in the same way one doesn’t look directly into the midday sun. He focuses a spot on your forehead instead, or your temple, or your lips.

You expect some kind of reaction to your jab, but you don’t get one. His jaw only clenches and he proceeds as though you hadn’t said a word. “How many of your kind escaped?”

“Like I’d tell _you_.”

You wish he’d let up on your wrists so you could reach the dagger strapped to your calf in your boot, a clever move you’d seen a Paladin pull during the battle you decided to exploit. Surely _that_ would get a reaction out of him, if nothing else.

No, you are absolutely _not_ willing to investigate why you want to provoke a reaction out of him so badly. It has nothing to do with this newfound hormone-driven internal monologue that preens at his attention and craves his touch, thank you very much.

His grip on your throat tightens again, harder than the first time, enough to make you buck against his hold and gasp for breath. Spots start to dance in your vision and you begin to feel a bit lightheaded, squirming against him harder.

“If I knew how many of them escaped or where they were, don’t you think I’d be with them right now?!” You wheeze, hands aching to claw at your throat. “The fighting was too thick for me to see anything, I ran straight for the woods.”

His lips twitch down into a frown and he eases his grip, eventually taking his hand away from your neck before bringing your wrists down from over your head to out in front of you. You gulp down air like a parched man in the desert all the while, unable to avoid this disgustingly pathetic sense of unease at the fact that he seems to really not like you.

You don’t need him, and you don’t want him. There’s no reason for you to like him.

He takes out a length of rope and winds it around wrists in quick, practiced movements, like he’s done it all a thousand times before.

“You’re coming with me,” he says simply, his tone brokering no argument.

Watching him wind the rope around your wrists makes you remember an evening last fall when you and Nimue and Pym had all sneaked off to Hawksbridge. You’d looked curiously in the windows of a brothel, pointing and giggling and blushing _very_ hard as to what the man-bloods apparently got up to in their free time. The experience had been… _illuminating_.

A large book on the main counter of the brothel illustrated positions like a menu, and your glances of it from a distance, as well as what was happening in the rooms themselves, had led to a certain understanding that humans had a broad and varied array of sexual tastes. In several situations you’d seen one of the partners tied up and not resisting their bondage in a way that told you they had _consented_ to such behavior.

The memory almost prompts a new snide remark to leave your lips, one you just barely keep reined in. You simper instead, “only because you asked so nicely, milord.”

You let him (yes, you’ve decided that you’re _letting_ him take you, as it certainly sounds better than the reality) to his horse, an enormous monstrosity of an animal, where he hauls you up on the saddle and follows suit shortly thereafter. That primal part of you, the one that’s been increasingly vocal ever since you scented him, hums with satisfaction at the feeling of his chest pressed up against your back, his thighs rubbing up against your own, and the feeling of his warm breath wafting against your skin.

“So,” you start, glad he can’t see the embarrassing heat coloring your cheeks (you really need to get this under control) as he kicks the horse into action, “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me where we’re going or what will happen to me once we get there?”

“No.”

_Perfect_.

You sigh. At least you still have that dagger in your boot.

In an entirely predictable turn of events, the dark-robed Paladin isn’t an especially skilled conversationalist. You try to start a conversation not once but twice over the course of the day, thinking to yourself that if perhaps you can get him talking he’ll be more averse to attempting a repeat of your first encounter. He shuts you down both times, and so you ride in silence.

Your frustration at him and at your situation in general simmers in your veins like a boiling pot of water. The flimsy control you hold over your emotions just barely manages to keep you in check, because there are a thousands things you want to say to this man that burnt your village and massacred your people and that the fates somehow decided was to be your—

_No_ , you think to yourself, firmly closing that train of thought. He’s a human, he can’t be an Alpha if he’s a human, that isn’t how it _works_. Whatever you’re feeling is some kind of fluke, a mistake, nothing more.

You settle into the saddle and watch the trees pass you by. The rhythmic movements of being on horseback and the feeling of the warm chest against your back makes your eyes grow heavy. Soon enough, you nod off, breathing in the smell of woodsmoke, juniper, and leather.

* * *

You wake up to the feeling of the dark-robed Paladin nudging your shoulder from behind.

“Wake up, girl,” his voice is rough, lips right up against your ear.

Your senses are groggy from the sleep, but you shoot up in the saddle once you realize that you’d slumped against his chest while you’d slept and he’d had to wrap an arm around your waist to keep you from falling off.

You clear your throat, entire face absolutely aflame, and mumble an awkward apology under your breath that he doesn’t respond to. _Gods_ , you’re so embarrassed that you pray to the earth to open up and swallow you whole.

You’re in a different part of the forest now, with newer growth and more sparse areas to navigate through, and the sun is low on the horizon again, the sky growing steadily darker with each passing moment. No blood must have been spilt this day, as the sunset is a pastel pink and coral instead of the blood red and gold it had been the night prior.

“We’ll camp here for the night,” he says curtly, steering the horse into a small clearing. Unexpectedly, his hands fly to your waist, and you stiffen before realizing that he’s helping lift you off the saddle. Your feet land on the grass with a dull thud.

Once he’s off the horse he digs around in the saddle bags for a moment, putting on the leather gloves you’d seen him wear earlier and taking out a longer length of rope and moving to untie and re-tie your hands. You watch him, silently, obediently holding out your hands as he undoes the knots and then does it all over again on the longer rope.

“Why am I still alive?” You ask him, because he’d seemed so dead-set on tying you to that cross the day before and watching you burn like all the others. But then he’d found you in the forest and you’d readily confessed that you didn’t know anything, but, for some inexplicable reason, your heart is still beating in your chest.

His jaw clenches. He avoids looking into your eyes like he’s paid to do it, staring resolutely at the rope around your wrist or your shoulder or the tree behind you. “Stay here. Don’t try to escape,” he says, not answering your question, tying the other end of the rope around your wrists to a low-lying tree branch before stalking off into the forest, out of sight.

You look over at the dark-robed Paladin’s horse. “Is he always like this?”

The horse huffs out a breath.

You begin to weigh your options. There’s enough slack in the rope for you to sit down or reach into your boot for the dagger, but the dark-robed Paladin is close enough where you can still hear his footsteps. Turning around you see him stalking through the forest, bending down to find twigs and fallen branches. Firewood.

You could get the dagger out of your boot, cut the rope, and run, but there are two potential issues with that plan:

  1. If the dark-robed Paladin pursues you on foot, you would have to outrun him. You were one of the fastest sprinters in the village but he seems far fitter than anyone in your village had been, and you can’t be confident that you’d be able to outrun him. 
  2. If the dark-robed Paladin pursues you on horseback, you’re fucked. You definitely can’t outrun a horse. 



You gnaw on the inside of your jaw, considering. You’d steal the horse, but you aren’t an especially experienced rider. There had never been too much cause for you to ride, once you’d been taken in by the Sky Folk you’d only left the village on a handful of occasions, never going anywhere that was more than a few days’ walk.

Best wait, you think, until he’s asleep. You’ll have to run the risk of the dark-robed Paladin finding your dagger within the next few hours, but the risk of him pursuing you is significantly decreased, and your chance of a successful escape much greater.

And so you wait.

The two of you are completely and utterly silent as he starts the fire and skins the rabbit he found for your dinner. You watch his careful handling of the blade, deft fingers removing the unsavory parts of the animal and casting it aside.

There’s a chill to the air tonight that wasn’t there the night before, and you shiver, drawing your shoulders together and huddling as close to the fire as you dare to. The image of those three girls tied to those crosses, their bodies burning, is still fresh in your mind. You’re wary of the flames.

The dark-robed Paladin skewers the meat on two separate sticks and holds it over the fire, turning it every so often to even out the heat on all sides. The light of the fire casts a warm glow on his features, wisps of honey brown, wavy hair peeking out from the hood of his cloak. He looks more human this way, less monstrous. You see the hint of freckles on his nose and the tops of his cheeks beneath the dark marks under his grey-blue eyes.

_Handsome_ , you think, _for a murderer_.

“You keep looking at me,” he says finally, _still_ refusing to even so much as glance your way, his attention resolutely focused on the meat over the fire.

You keep staring, not having the energy to even pretend to be ashamed, and decide to take a page out of his book. You don’t answer the question.

You have some questions of your own.

You swallow your hatred for him, for the moment, (something concerningly easy to do) and decide to alter your approach. “Why did you decide to join the Paladins?”

He’s silent for a long while, long enough to make you think he isn’t going to answer at all. After a time, the rabbit is cooked, and he hands you a skewer. You manage to carefully eat it despite both your wrists still being tied, though the other end just lies loose on the floor, an arm’s length away from him.

Then:

“I was given an opportunity to save souls, and guide the Fey people to the Lord’s salvation. I took it.”

You take another bite of your skewer, considering his words and crafting your response while you chew.

“From my perspective,” you say carefully, calmly, with an excess of self control, “what you call salvation looks more like mass murder.”

His head jerks up and he looks at you now, the fire between you reflecting in his eyes, his jaw set and his brows pulled together. The intensity of his glare makes you want to wither. “I don’t have to explain myself to you,” he hisses, scowling.

The gland at your neck pulses and a white hot panic shoots through you at his anger, his distress, all directed at you, all because of you. _Alpha is angry,_ the new voice inside of you cries, _appease him._

“It’s just,” you start, your voice coming out meeker than intended, “you say that my soul is infected, that it can only be cleansed in death, that I’m this horrible demon or something but I don’t _feel_ like a demon—“ and the bitterness creeps in your voice a bit more now, your anger coming up to the surface, “I’ve never hurt anyone, I—“

“I watched a young boy die yesterday,” you say, staring into the fire. “He couldn’t have been more than ten, and the Paladin smiled as he ran his sword through the boy’s chest, he _grinned_ and the act didn’t look anything like salvation. That was a _murder_ , not an act of God.”

A long pause.

“I’ve never hurt the little ones,”

_This is useless_ , you think to yourself. What are you even trying to achieve with this? You want to convince him, somehow, bring him onto your side, but he’s likely got an entire lifetime of propaganda poured into his brain and what? You think you can start to undo that in a single conversation? _Stupid_.

The look you shoot him is one of pure and utter loathing. “Good for you.”

You use your bound hands to shove yourself away from him, turning your back on him and the fire, before laying down, closing your eyes, and pretending to sleep.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You feel blood trickle down the side of your neck, and so you bring a hand up to wipe some of it away in complete and utter disbelief. 
> 
> Sure enough, your hand comes away red. 
> 
> “Do you have any idea,” you start, voice wavering, hysteria brewing just underneath the surface of your calm facade, “what you’ve just done?”
> 
> /// Brief Recap ///
> 
> Your village was burnt to the ground by a Red Paladin raiding party, and you just barely managed to escape being burnt at the stake by the dark-robed paladin we know to be The Weeping Monk. The next day, he manages to find you hiding spot, and takes you captive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I disappear for two months? yes. Am I back now? Also yes. 
> 
> A combination of two things kept me away for so long: writing my undergraduate thesis and a severe case of writer's block. I think both have been resolved! Let's get on with our trash romance with these two idiots. 
> 
> Strongly recommend you read the first chapter again to remember what's happening.
> 
> Also, TW for intrusive thoughts, threats of sexual violence, actual violence, mating bonds without informed consent, and lengthy description of the internal thoughts of the Reader having a panic attack and death-spiraling. The Reader having anxiety will be a recurring theme, and the premise is pretty dub con, so if that bothers you I'd reconsider reading this if I were you. Please take care of yourself!

_“For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live,” Father Carden reads out, and Lancelot raises the whip to lash it again against his own back._

_The pain blooms behind his eyelids like the rising dawn and he tenses, swallowing his suffering like a bitter pill, breathing ragged, fighting the black spots in his vision to continue the verse._

_“Put to death what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire—“_

His own voice and the crack of the whip still echoes in his ears when Lancelot wakes to find you gone.

He sees the robe he’d bound your hands in, cut cleanly by a blade, and curses without thinking, then chastises himself for it, all the while seething in newfound fury.

And the new demon that’s taken residence in his head begins to speak once more. _Omega is gone. She wouldn’t have left if we had claimed her, filled her up with our knot like a_ good _alpha—_

Choking on air at the direction that his thoughts are taking, his cheeks aflame, he shoves the demon aside, muttering a Hail Mary under his breath while standing, and then pauses when he turns to attach his swords to his belt. One is missing, its scabbard lying empty in the grass. You’ve left small footprints in the damp ground, the grass and moss slightly depressed where you’ve stepped.

His senses have been finely attuned to you all day, and so it takes little effort for him to focus on the trail of your scent. It’d taken a significant exertion of will to _not_ focus on you while you’d been riding earlier, your thighs rubbing up against him, your hair tickling his face, those curious spots at the back of your neck, pink and inflamed, continuously drawing his eye. He has spots of his own, part of the reason why he seldom lowers his hood and grown his hair long, but he’d always been confused as to their _purpose_.

But your _scent_. Christ almighty, you’d tempted him all day. You smell like wildflowers and freshly baked bread and it’s been doing things to him, awakening a certain part of his anatomy he’s always staunchly ignored.

So it’s all too easy for Lancelot to open himself up to you, taking in your scent and holding it in his mouth like some fine wine, and letting the trail guide him further still into the forest. You were easier to track than any other Fey he’d encountered, the main reason why he’d been able to find you in the forest in the first place.

Meanwhile, in the corner of his mind that he’s banished it to, the demon paces, agitated. _She left because we didn’t make her feel wanted, we didn’t make her feel safe._ It’s intrusive thoughts pound in his skull like a battering ram and Lancelot grits his teeth, his fists clenching at his sides.

This demon is probably your fault, he thinks. You did something to him, infected him somehow so his stomach would turn at the thought of hurting you. _Yes_ , the realization is a relief. You’d infected him with something, simple. These thoughts, these feelings, aren’t his own.

_Most glorious Prince of Heavenly Armies,_ he prays, _Saint Michael the Archangel, defend me in battle against the rulers of this world in darkness, agains the spirits of wickedness in the high places—_

The demon laughs in its cage, unaffected and undeterred. _You fool, you deny your heritage at your own peril._

He follows your trail for over a mile, the concern for your welfare (undoubtedly a side effect of whatever you’d done to him) mounting once he climbs over a hill and sees the light of a camp fire not too far off.

Lancelot’s pace quickens. The woods are full of Paladins, all tasked with finding and rooting out any Fey stragglers that had escaped the raiding parties. It shouldn’t make his heart leap in fear, they’re doing _God’s work_ , each sinful, infected Fey killed is a soul saved, after all.

And then he catches sight of your figure crossing in front of the fire, an immediately recognizable silhouette. You’re being cornered by two of his Brothers, one holding your hands behind your back, the other holding _his_ sword in his hand.

“I reckon we’ve found ourselves the Wolf Blood Witch, mate.” The Paladin’s words are carried to him in the silent night breeze, along with the sharp smell of your fear.

“I don’t know who that is but I’m definitely not her, okay? I’m just a normal person—“

You’re cut off by a sharp slap across the face that makes you spit blood. “Don’t bother lying, you Fae bitch,”

Lancelot’s close now, only a few yards away, ensconced in the shadow of the woods, and his hands twitch to intervene because you’re _his_ prisoner he found you first. His instincts as a Fey are screaming at him, _protect her, claim her, show her how strong we are—_

His entire body is itching with the urge, but he holds back, the temperance beat into him by Father Carden granting him just enough self control to make him stop and consider things. If he leaves now, they’ll kill you.

And perhaps this is God’s will, and the Lord is showing him a way out, a way to sidestep his unease and reluctance to do what he should have done a few hours ago. Perhaps this is an answer to his prayers for guidance.

The demon howls at this, rattles the bars of its cage, shaking the foundations of its prison, its outrage a wild, boundless thing. The demon points to the emptiness inside of him, an ever-expanding black hole of nothing and it says that _if you leave now it will only get worse. She’s ours._

The two sides warring within him reach a standstill. And so he hovers in the shadows, thoughts racing, his hand twitching at the hilt of the sole sword at his hip.

Back in front of the fire, the Brother in front of you runs a knuckle down your cheek, a sneer curling his cruel features. He looks over to his partner, the one holding your arms behind your back. “D’ya suppose Father Carden will care if she’s damaged upon delivery?”

The one holding your hands behind your back sneers, baring yellow, crooked teeth. “As long as she’s got enough left in her to scream when she burns, I don’t think Father Carden’ll care much at all,” He glances toward the fire and to the two other Paladins, asleep on their bedrolls, and opens his mouth to say something but his words are carried off by the breeze, and Lancelot can’t hear them.

What he does hear is fragments of the other Brother’s response, something about being _tired of always having the last turn_ , and _not wanting their sloppy seconds_.

The insinuation makes Lancelot’s vision go red, the Demon breaking through to the surface, taking control of his body, forcing him to stalk closer to the fire, his second sword drawn.

* * *

What happens next is mostly a blur. You’re silent as the two Paladins argue as to who goes first, and whether or not they should include their brothers, too busy thinking of how you’re going to access the dagger still tucked into your boot.

And then the dark-robed Paladin storms into the clearing, looking every bit the reaper of souls he had when you first saw him. His spare sword is drawn, his eyes full of fire, and the Paladins jump at the sight of him.

“Sir!” One of them cries, startled, “We’ve found the Wolf Blood Witch, and we were just discussing how best to transport her to Father Card—“

But his words die in his throat as the dark-robed Paladin yanks his Brother’s hood back harshly, pulling him away from you, before raising his sword and cutting off his head in one clean movement.

“ _She’s mine,_ ” he snarls at the others, looking deranged with the wild look in his eyes and the way he bares his teeth.

_His?_ You think, taken aback by the sudden change. The rising feverish feeling and all of its accompanying intrusive thoughts preen at his declaration, but your rational self scrambles back, tries to get away from the fighting.

The other Paladins that had been sleeping stumble out of their bedrolls and you would have thought that the dark-robed Paladin would be on the losing side, outnumbered five to one (having killed the sixth already) but _oh no_.

It’s a massacre.

He claims his second sword and moves like they’re extensions of his arms, every movement as fluid as it is merciless. Not a single strike is wasted, each clashing of swords bringing his opponent ever closer to their end.

You know you need to make a decision and you need to make one fast. The dark robed Paladin is likely going to win this fight, and you can either try to run and likely stumble across another troupe of Paladins, or you can stay, and roll the dice as to what his intentions are.

You’re backing up slowly, trying to slink into the forest again, away from the bloodshed and the thick fog of pheromones to try and think of a third option when your hair is wound around a fist and yanked back. You fall flat on your ass at the force of it, hissing in pain.

“You must be the Wolf Blood Bitch,” yet another Paladin sneers, with a cross burnt into his scalp and a haircut that looks like someone just put a bowl over his head and trimmed all the excess.

“I still have absolutely no idea what that means,” you mutter, reaching down to fist your hand around the hilt of the dagger in your boot. He tries to kick you in the stomach but you roll out of the way on instinct, moving into a defensive half-crouch, the dagger held out in warning.

“Playing coy, eh? It’s obvious you’ve enchanted the Weeping Monk to fight against his own Brothers. End it now and I might be able to convince Father Carden to kill you quickly.”

_The Weeping Monk, so that’s what they call him._ With the dark marks under his eyes you supposed it fit his whole brand, though the name failed to inspire nearly as much fear as the man himself.

You really aren’t in shape for a fight, your skull pounding with intrusive thoughts and an ever-increasing fever you’re desperately trying to ignore. But it’s either this or die, which you aren’t especially keen on either.

“He turned on them all by himself, actually. Maybe he got tired of the whole murdering innocent people thing, or I won him over due to my sparkling personality.” You loosely gesture over to the still-ongoing fight with the dagger. “Why don’t you go and ask him?”

The Paladin’s eye twitches and his sneer settles into a scowl. “A slow death then, I think.”

In hindsight, you really should have ran while you had the chance.

After every swing of his sword that you dodge or manage to feebly parry with the dagger you’re surprised that you’re still alive. He has the clear advantage, though you’re faster and quicker on your feet than he is. Each blow that you just barely manage to avoid makes your movements all the more hurried and nervous. Even more concerning is that he plays with you, purposefully holding back, giving you smaller injuries as opposed to finishing you off.

You need to either disarm him or level the playing field by picking up a sword of your own. Your best chance is then to go back into the Paladin camp and pick up a sword of one of the fallen, which, while not the ideal situation, is really the only way forward that doesn’t end in your immediate death.

Your attacker, for his part, has been pushing you back in the direction of the camp since the beginning, while you’d been retreating. It takes less effort for you to follow his lead while dodging his blows, all the while keeping the fallen swords in your peripheral vision, tracking which one is closest.

The Weeping Monk, the dark robed paladin, is finishing off the last two Brothers. They must be far better fighters than their predecessors as you see the glimmer of sweat on the Weeping Monk’s brow.

Your lack of focus on your attacker is rewarded with a deep cut on the side of your arm.You hiss and pause to look at your wound just long enough for one of his kicks to land this time, sending your sprawling on your ass yet again. Only, this time, you’d planned for it.

“It’s useless to fight, you know, we’re destined to win, we have—“

You cut his words off by picking up the sword to your left and driving the blade up into him, the angle from your position on the ground spearing him from lower rib to upper back.

“May your afterlife be as pleasant as you were.” You say, eschewing the traditional phrase for one you really meant. You push the body up and away from you, letting him bleed out onto the forest floor before standing again, taking stock of who’s left.

It’s just down to one Paladin and the Weeping Monk ( _the name still doesn’t quite fit_ ) now, all the rest either dead or close to it. While you’d been confident in the Weeping Monk’s success early on, he seems to be losing steam. He might lose, and the dagger still clutched in your hand feels like it might finally be made of use.

You raise the dagger and aim it at the last enemy left standing before you can second guess yourself, aiming for his center of mass.

The Paladin stumbles back once the dagger hits its mark, and you thank the Hidden for all of those days you’d spent alone in the forest, throwing daggers at old logs and hunting rabbits.

A single swing of a sword later and it’s just the two of you standing in the clearing, chests heaving. He sheathes his sword and stalks closer and for some reason you let him, standing perfectly still as he gathers you into his arms and clutches you like you’re something precious, one arm wrapped tightly around your waist and the other cradling the back of your head.

You’re too overwhelmed to push him away. All of the adrenaline that had kept you going in the fight, that had abated your growing fever, is subsiding, leaving you worn and exhausted and aching. So you wrap your arms around him, too, hands digging in and bunching up the fabric of the back of his robes. Whatever he’d done before he’d clearly protected you here, killed his brothers to save you, and so the desperate need for comfort wins out over the remaining reluctance and suspicion.

He oozes relief, quite literally, Alpha pheromones covering you like a thick cloud, making your breathing slow, your tense shoulders droop. The chemical onslaught does exactly what it’s supposed to do: relax and comfort you.

You notice a moment too late that his head is dipping down to your neck, and he takes your scent down in gulps like a starving man. And the feeling of his nose nuzzling your neck, gentle stimulation so close to your mating gland, it makes you keen, makes your inner walls clench around something that isn’t there.

And suddenly the fever ramps up, those intrusive thoughts chanting yes, more, please, cause you to wind your hands around his neck to draw him closer. You toss down his hood and sink your fingers into his hair, picking out the strip of leather that’s tied it back. It’s _soft_ , softer than you’d expected.

The smell of his arousal is sharp and heady, building up fast like he doesn’t know how to control himself, filling up all the extra space in the air. You’ve only ever imagined yourself so close to someone like this at night, in the comfort of your own room, when anyone who could possibly hear you had gone to sleep. It all affects you maybe more than it should, thoughts drifting away to make place a sudden and overwhelming wanting.

He must smell your pleasure in your scent or in the air because he groans, his fingers tightening around your waist. There isn’t a hairsbreadth of space between your two bodies and you feel the beginnings of something hard and insistent pressing up against you.

“Why do you smell so—“ his voice is deeper, hoarser, practically a growl against your skin. His breath is ragged, his hands tightening and loosening against you like he’s warring with himself. And then, like he can’t help it, his words trail off and _he starts mouthing at your mating gland_.

Your response is immediate, the pleasure white hot and _electric_. Your mind blanks with it, all the breath knocked out of you. The only two people that exist in the world are you and him and you think distractedly that this is how you’d like to spend the rest of your life, with his mouth on your neck and his body pressed up against you.

Your Omega brain wants _more_ , she wants bare skin on skin, a bed, lots of soft pillows and blankets, and more importantly, his knot inside of you, filling you up over and over and over—

The moan, and the words that follow, slip out of you before you can even try to stop them: _“Alpha, please,”_

You don’t even know what you’re begging for, really, but he answers the call all the same— shifting slightly so his mouth slants over your mating gland.

And then he bites down, _hard_.

* * *

You cling to him as you ride out the pleasure of the bite, your entire body shuddering. One second you’re a tensed coil and the next you’re like putty in his hands.

Your inner Omega is overjoyed. _Alpha cares about us, he mated us—_

Mated.

The word, and all the ramifications therein, pour over you a bucket of ice cold water. _Mated_. He mated you.

You disentangle yourself from the dark-robed Paladin and shove him away from you. The dark-robed Paladin who is apparently very much _not_ a human, judging by the blood staining his now too-sharp teeth.The dark-robed Paladin who has an incredibly obvious, and large, tent in his trousers.

The dark-robed Paladin who’s Fey, and an Alpha, and just fucking _mated_ you.

You’d said please, you’d begged him for —well, you’re still not sure— but what you had most certainly _not_ meant was for him to give you a very bloody, very permanent, _very forever-bound-in-a-magical-way_ , mating bite.

You’re having too many thoughts all at once and your mind isn’t able to focus on any of them. Why is he a Paladin if he’s Fey? Is he still thinking about killing you? Gods you don’t even know his real _name_ — 

You feel blood trickle down the side of your neck, and so you bring a hand up to wipe some of it away in complete and utter disbelief.

Sure enough, your hand comes away red.

“Do you have any idea,” you start, voice wavering, hysteria brewing just underneath the surface of your calm facade, “what you’ve just done?”

There’s a wild look in his eyes, the kind of frenzy you’d caught glimpses of when an Alpha scented an Omega he was particularly compatible with or when a mate was threatened. A very primal, shoot-first-ask-questions-never kind of expression.

And it’s almost comical how quickly that fades when he takes in the sight of your neck. There must be more blood than you think because he pales, his face unusually expressive, and turns a bit green around the gills.

“I — You —“ He sputters, and you really do think he’s going to puke for a second but he takes control of himself, his eyes impossibly wide.

And then he unsheathes his sword, still covered in the blood of his Brothers, and lifts it up at you. His wide eyes and shocked expression giving way to complete and unbridled fury.

“You did something to me, enchanted me somehow,” He hisses, leveling the tip of the blade to your throat and you lean away from him, the rush of angry Alpha pheromones making you want to cower and run.

You absolutely do not cower and run, baring your teeth into a snarl instead, clenching your fists and leaning forward now, into the blade, feeling the sharp tip ghost against your skin. _“I did something to you?_ ”

Gods he must have some balls saying that. Blaming you, the _victim_? You’ll flay off his skin and turn him into a rug at the _implication_ alone. Your inner Omega seems to agree, her hackles rising as well. _Alpha just said what now?_

“You’re the one,” you bite out slowly, enunciating every letter with utmost care, “who just bonded us together for _life_!”

“So undo it then,” he snarls.

“ _Undo it?_ Do I look like an expert on Fey mating bonds to you?”

He somehow pales and blushes at the word ‘mating’, and the shocked look on his face confirms what you’d suspected. In one way, it’s a realization of your worst fears, but in another, it’s an enormous relief.

He had no idea what he was doing when he bit you.

For some reason, you have very mixed feelings about this.

A pretty sizable part of you feels violated, this is very much _not_ how mating bites work in Fey society. Mating bites happen between informed, _consenting_ partners after a courting period, not *you mentally gesture around the entire situation* _whatever_ _this is_.

Another part of you, still riding the high of his potent Alpha pheromones, is hurt because he _chose_ you and now he’s backing out, blaming you, distancing himself. That’s the Omega brain talking.

It’s a lot to take in all at once. You can feel yourself closing up, wanting to ignore it all, to just _run, run, run—_

You shut your eyes tightly and breathe in, hold, and then breathe out. Pinching the bridge of your nose, you try to calm your thoughts, focusing on the environment around you— the crisp fresh air of the fast approaching fall, the sounds of birds in the trees. You deliberately try to ignore the blood on your face and your aching wounds and the fact that you’re currently surrounded by dead bodies.

_“Focus, for me, sweet girl,” Lenore had whispered, crouching in front of you while your thoughts raced, everything overwhelming you all at once, becoming one droning buzz. “What you can hear, smell, taste? List three of them for me.”_

_Pine tree, blackbird, robin._

You mouth out the words, just to yourself. _Pine tree, blackbird, robin._

“What are you doing?” There’s suspicion in his tone that grates on your nerves.

You take a deep breath in, then out _._ “I’m trying,” you start, looking at the bloody sword that’s still in his hand and all of the bodies _and oh fuck I killed someone_ before feeling your pulse pick up again and closing your eyes once more. Deep breath in. “To not freak out right now.” Deep breath out.

The irony isn’t lost on you that _you’re_ the one whose neck is covered in blood and _he’s_ the one whose teeth are still stained with it and somehow it falls on _you_ to be the calm, rational party in this conversation. And you have no doubt that he still thinks your soul is tainted and that you’re a demon somehow, because that makes _perfect_ sense.

You breathing keeps picking up, the panic rising like an inevitable tide, every breath shorter and shallower than the last.

_Run run run run run,_ your instincts insist. You stumble out of the clearing, the Weeping Monk hot on your heels.

“Where are you going? We aren’t done—“

“I just need,” you heave, stumbling a few more feet until you’re out of sight of the dead bodies before bracing yourself against a tree, fingernails digging into the bark to the point of pain. “I just need a minute.”

If you can’t fix this you’ll be stuck with him, the Fey Paladin who burnt your village and helped massacre your people. You’ll be bound forever to someone who thinks you’re evil, who wants your people dead, and you’ll be unable to love anyone else because the _faer gwedh_ is _forever_.

You’ll be able to catch the tail-end of his thoughts and feel the breadth of his hatred for your kind like it’s your own, all while being drawn to him, his face the only one you’re able to fantasize about at night. He won’t be able to kill you or tell someone else do it, so you’ll live through all of this, and when the Church has won you’ll be so thoroughly alone—

Your nails dig into your palms and you screw your eyes shut again, searching for that pine forest smell and those bird sounds. You try to suffocate the spiraling thoughts but it’s as effective as throwing a bucket of water on a raging wildfire.

Vision blurring, you take a step back until tree bark digs into your back and let yourself slide down until you’re sitting in the grass, knees pulled up to your chest. Shaking fingers dig themselves into your hair, and you try to focus on your breathing through the thick, anxious fog that covers your thoughts.

There is a long period where you’re just sitting there in the grass, hands in your hair, knees drawn up to your chest, just trying to focus on your breathing. Reining in your thoughts when you’re this far gone is an arduous task, a state of calm slipping out of your fingers as you try to focus on it like the plot of a dream.

He’s blissfully silent the whole time, long enough for you to forget he’s there and then slowly come to terms with his existence again.

“Fey biology is different from human biology,” you manage to say, trying to work past your shuddering lungs, “in that we present when we come of age as either Alphas, Betas, or Omegas. Alphas and Omegas have uh, glands—”

_Gods this is so awkward,_ “that can be bit by another Alpha or Omega to form what’s called a mating bond. It’s not something done lightly, the _faer gwedh_ ties the souls together, it’s only something done between people who—“

_Love each other_ , is what you think to yourself, but the words taste like ash in your mouth.

“Who what?” He asks, his voice hoarse.

You shake your head, staring at the forest floor. “It doesn’t matter. We have a bigger, more urgent problem: we're both going into heat."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every comment makes me write new chapters faster!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What are those?”
> 
> You quirk an eyebrow and point with a finger. “These? They’re called breasts.”
> 
> The glare he gives you could flatten a village. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter for you! Might be a bit of a wait until the next one so I can figure out an actual plot. 
> 
> One thing to note: I changed the instance in the first chapter where the reader uses magic to wrap tree branches around her because I had second thoughts about the direction I wanted that whole identity to go in. I think this works much better!

“You’re sure this will work?”

“No,” you huff, bending down to gather more leaves from the small plant and shoving them into your pockets, “but our alternative is having sex, which presumably, as a monk, you’re against.”

You look over at him and see his cheeks blooming red, a recurring pattern. _It’s kind of cute_ , you think, before scowling at yourself and pushing that thought away. In response to your increasing amount of hormones, your thoughts about him had been veering into an unhelpfully positive direction.

He says nothing in response, staring resolutely at the water you’d directed him to boil. Once you’d explained the ramifications of his actions in as much detail as you could stand, he’d become begrudgingly cooperative. Based off of the look on his face once you’d finished explaining, you figured he likely wanted to avoid being stuck with you forever as much as you did.

There’s still a solid amount of suspicion and disdain lingering between the two of you. You’re decently confident he still thinks you somehow associated with evil forces, but he seems willing to set that aside for your shared goal and so you’re trying to follow suit.

Tea made from Venusia leaves is the only thing you’ve ever heard of that can stay a heat for a few days. Back at the village, the local healers had managed to cultivate an entire garden of the small, rare plant, breeding it selectively for its foliage, the only part of the plant that contains the necessary properties. As it was, it’d taken the two of you hours to find a single specimen.

You’d split up during the search, keeping your distance, and it helped reduce the fever to a simmer rather than a boil, but your temper had grown significantly shorter. The lack of intense pheromones and your continued stress will help stave off the worst of it for another few hours, but time is of the essence.

Having gathered all of the mature leaves from the tiny plant, you walk over to the fire and get the tea brewing with utmost care. You might only have one shot at this before things progress far enough that you can’t turn back.

“Even if this does work, it won’t delay things forever, at best it’ll just give us more time to figure out another solution.”

“You said it couldn’t be undone.”

“I said I wasn’t an _expert_. I’ve never heard of a bond being undone but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible, I’m sure someone’s been bonded against their will before—“ you notice, out of the corner of your eye, that he full-body flinches at this, like you’ve hit him.

At _that_ your head snaps over to him lightning fast. “What, so massacring an entire species is fine but you draw the line _here_? _Now you feel bad?_ What about those girls you strung up and burnt at the stake, how you were about to do the same to me?“

One minute you’re watching the tea brew and the next you’re sprawled on the dirt and he’s straddling you, one hand on either side of your head, furious expression inches away from your face.

You see it again— that endless sea of fury convulsing just beneath his skin. You wonder what must have happened to him to give him such a temper. If his instinct would allow it, you’re sure he would have throttled you, which would be a valiant effort to solve his problem but wouldn’t actually work the way he might intend.

The _faer gwedh_ ties the soul together— if you die, he dies, and vice versa.

“I killed my own Brothers because this thing in my head is _screaming_ at me to keep you safe, what more do you want from me?” He growls, his voice dark and insistent. His proximity makes you flush, makes that fever rise again.

_Appease him_ , your inner Omega insists, but you disregard that piece of garbage advice out of hand. His body language, his tone of voice, it’s all screaming at you to submit, he wants you subdued. You won’t give him the satisfaction. He deserves to suffer, to have to reckon with all of his shitty choices. He needs to be—

“ _Sorry_ ,” you hiss back, temper flaring even further.

“What?”

“I want you to be _sorry_.”

And it’s the truth. You want him to feel terrible for what he’s done, to realize that participating in this genocide against his own people is wrong (speaking of his own people, that’s _definitely_ a conversation you’re going to need to have soon). You know, logically, that he didn’t know what he was doing when he’d bit you, but that excuse doesn’t carry over to anything else.

You don’t need an apology for the bite, despite how it may seem, but an apology for the ransacking of your home, for those three girls in the village, that would be at least fulfilling the bare fucking _minimum_. An apology won’t fix anything, but that doesn’t make the words worthless either.

And after an apology, you’d really also like an explanation.

He blinks down at you, looking well and truly dumbfounded. The anger on his face, in his scent and body language, it recedes, replaced by something else that smells suspiciously like shame. He moves away from you and back to his spot in front of the fire without a word, hardly sparing you a glance.

Glory be to the Hidden you want to scream at this infuriating, walking contradiction of a man. Instead you take a few deep, calming breaths, and pour the tea into the tin traveling cups that he’d set out for you. You hand one over to him and he takes it gently, careful to not let any of your skin touch his.

_It’s a bit too late for that_ , you want to say, but drink the tea instead of needling him further.

* * *

The tea works. Or at least, you’re pretty sure it works, considering you no longer feel an intense urge to tear off your clothes and kneel before him and ask very nicely if he’d like to fuck you into the dirt. Not to say that it isn’t still there, but you’re able to ignore it far more easily.

How would sex with a monk even work, anyway? He probably wouldn’t even know what to do, which means there would be a lot of fumbling, it’d be painful, you likely wouldn’t even finish, but then again, maybe he’d be—

No, no no no no. Nope. That is a direction your thoughts are most certainly not allowed to go in. Absolutely not. _He’s a murderer_ , you chant to yourself. _He’s a brainwashed murderer that thinks I’m evil and I am definitely not going to focus on how objectively enormous his hands are and what that might mean for the rest of him._

You need a change of scenery and maybe a bath so you can clean off— what do they call them, again? Ah, yes— your sinful thoughts. No better time than the present.

There are aches and pains in your body you notice now that you’ve spent so long sitting on the hard ground, and you wince as you stand up and brush off your dress.

“I’m going to go bathe and dress my wounds,” you tell him, pointedly look at his pack, and muster all the politeness you can bear. “Do you have any soap or bandages I could use?” Looking at the grimy state of his hair and skin, you think perhaps you’re out of luck on the soap, but a fighter with no bandages seems a bit unlikely.

“I’m coming with you,” He says simply, in a tone that brokers no argument, and puts out the fire and gathers his things.

You open your mouth to object but then think better of it, reminded again of your run-in with the Paladins. You wouldn’t have survived if it hadn’t been for his (albeit reluctant and not wholly consenting) protection. Better to have all of his anger working for you rather than against you.

He’s remarkably speedy in the way he packs everything back up and unties his horse, his movements purposeful and practiced. You’re hardly a few yards away from the fire when he’s walking beside you, reins in hand.

And that’s how you find yourself, a short while later, pulling your dress over your head as your very own personal Paladin chokes on air.

“You can’t honestly have thought I was going to bathe with my clothes _on_?” you ask, folding your soiled dress with more care than it probably deserves.

When you move to take your undergarments off next, he turns around to face away from you, boots pivoting in the dirt with amusing speed.

He says nothing in response, so you wade into the stream, sighing as the cool water washes over your scrapes and bruises. You immediately dive below the surface, making sure to let the water rise up high enough to touch the bite on your neck.

When the Sky Folk had first found you, bruised and sick, having lived in the forest for weeks all by yourself, you’d been _terrified_ of water. You’d looked at cups of water with outright hatred, and the mere suggestion of bathing in the lake had spun you into a complete panic attack, leaving you (and everyone who had the misfortune of dealing with you) worn out and exhausted.

Everything about it had petrified you— the way the water always called to you, how it told you things, and the fleshy bits of skin on your lower ribs separated when submerged to let you breathe underwater when none of the Sky Folk could.

Nimue’s mother, Lenore, had told you that you were a member of one of the water tribes, because _of course you were_. One of the Water Folk, terrified of water. The irony was too much to bear.

It’d taken years of gentle encouragement and endless patience from Nimue, Pym, and Lenore, but you eventually managed to overcome the fear. And now you’re able to wade into a stream and relish the feeling instead of dread it.

“The tea, like I said, won’t delay things forever. We need to figure out where we’re going to go from here,” you tell him, reaching for the soap and running it along your skin.

You cringe at what you say next, anticipating his response. “A Fey elder would—“

“No.”

You grit your teeth and scrub harder. “I cannot stress this enough when I say that finding a Fey elder is the only option I can think of that doesn’t result in us either dead or stuck with—“

“I said no.”

The bar of soap hits him hard, square in the back. He draws his sword and whirls around, sword leveled against your neck again. It doesn’t spike your anxiety this time, it just makes you angry. The two of you seem to be excellent and making each other furious.

Perhaps he forgot you’re naked in his fit anger but he sort of… freezes when he sees your chest. You stood up in the stream to throw the soap at him and everything above your waist is no longer underwater.

“What are those?”

You quirk an eyebrow and point with a finger. “These? They’re called breasts.”

The glare he gives you could flatten a village.

“No,” he gestures down with his sword, “ _those_.”

You sigh. “They’re gills.”

“Gills?”

“Yes, gills.”

“You have gills?”

“I have gills. I’m one of the Water Folk. Sometimes we have gills. It’s a thing.”

His eyes narrow, suspicious. “But you lived with the Sky Folk.”

You glare right back at him and cross your arms over your chest. “I’ll tell you my tragic backstory when you tell me yours, yeah? Until then, you can fuck right off. Also, don’t think I didn’t notice how we veered away from the more pressing topic of conversation. _We need to find a Fey elder._ ”

His jaw clenches and he purses his lips in clear disapproval.

“Alright, tell you what: if you can think of a _single_ better idea, we’ll do your thing.”

A bit of silence, then— “Fine.”

You allow yourself to fall back into the water and kick up your feet, using your magic to support your lounging position as you comb though your hair with your fingers and begin to braid it.

“Great,” you say brightly, infusing your tone with sarcastic optimism. “I look forward to hearing all about your brilliant plan.”

* * *

What feels like hours later, you’ve braided your hair countless times, bandaged your neck, and washed the stains out of your dress. You’re practicing your magic now, holding a ball of water in the air and stretching it out, pulling it through the air like one might a ribbon in a solstice celebration.

You finally took pity on him and emerged from the stream to put your clothes back on again, and how he’s watching you move the water through the air with his characteristic quiet intensity that you’re trying very hard to not be bothered by.

You can understand why the other Paladins had seemed so afraid of him, everything about him, even when he’s being relatively cooperative, sets you on edge in a way you aren’t accustomed to. It’s this feeling of being watched by someone so dangerous, the feeling of knowing that you’re prey.

He has yet to tell you that he’s thought of an alternative to your (apparently completely unacceptable) plan, and to your credit you’ve been _very_ patiently waiting to be enlightened. But there isn’t much daylight left to travel by the clock not the temporary stay of your heats is ticking.

“It’s almost sunset,” you say, diverting your focus away from the water and letting it crash back into the stream. You notice an almost imperceptible flinch run through him at the noise, his fingers inching closer to his blade on reflex. “Any progress on your master plan?”

His jaw clenches, a frequent habit of his, you’ve noticed. His glance away from you tells you all you need to know.

You sigh and roll over, turning your eyes towards the sky that’s growing darker by the minute. “I realize that I haven’t been especially kind, and if I’m being perfectly honest I think that’s a bit much to ask given our history and the origin of this situation, but I’ve been trying to focus on solutions to the problem that you pretty much single-handedly created, and you haven’t been particularly helpful.”

You wait a beat, to see if he’ll say anything, and he doesn’t.

You sit up and cross your legs, turning over to face him even though he’s refusing to look at you now. “And, listen, you probably still think I’m a demon and that all Fey are evil or whatever, and if your ignorance of Fey biology is anything to go by, you’ve been hearing that for a long time. I have no idea how to go about convincing you that the things you’ve been told aren’t true. I’m sure whoever indoctrinated you into this whole Paladin thing did a really thorough job and for every piece of evidence I could cite you’ve got a way of spinning around so it fits the story you’ve been told.”

“All I know,” you continue, “is that the tea I made from those leaves this morning gives us two days, maybe three. We don’t have time to do this whole think-of-a-different-plan thing. This tea is going to wear off, and when it does, that voice in your head—”

He turns at this, and you see for the first time how terrified he is of losing control of himself. For someone whose movements are so disciplined, whose facade is so hard to crack, you feel stupid for not trying to appeal to this part of him sooner.

The intrusive thoughts bother you, but someone like him, who’s so clearly the product of rigorous training? Losing control to what he perceives to be this evil side of himself would be awful, it would feel like defeat.

“—it’ll become impossible to ignore. And whatever chance we had of undoing this bond between us will disappear. So I _need_ you to work with me here,” you implore, because you really do need him on your side.

He’s got the weapons, the supplies, the knowledge of the landscape. You’ve got a source of water close by, so you could try to knock him out with a huge wave, but even if that would work you’d be left with an enormous man to drag around who’s _very_ recognizable among Paladins as well as a horse you barely know how to ride.

You don’t have anything left to say, no tricks up your sleeve, so you just stare into his eyes and look for something, any kind of change of heart or shift in his expression.

And your shoulders sag when he stands up and walks away.

You’re so caught up in your self pity and increasingly death-spiral thoughts that you don’t even notice the scrolls being offered to you until he nudges you with his boot.

“Here,” he says, pushing the rolled up documents in your direction, and you take them dumbly, not sure what you’re being offered. It isn’t until you roll them out that you realize what you’re looking at.

Maps, locations of villages, lists of surviving elders. The written history of the Fey, a full account of every tribe and village in the kingdom with population numbers, demographics, notable features.

It’s perfect. More than you need, really. A veritable treasure trove of intelligence. Your immediate joy fades when you remember who’s just handed it to you.

_They’ve been using this to hunt us down_.

The expression on his face, when you look up at him, is tense. It’s a peace offering, of sorts, but he knows that you know what this has been used for. He’s waiting for your anger, preparing himself for a fight.

And you are angry, you’re furious. The history of your people, used against you like this? To herald your own extinction? It’s disgusting.

But he offered it to you, knowing all of this. In spite of it.

You purse your lips and swallow, hard. This is significant, it’s more vulnerability than he’s ever shown you. It’s something approaching trust, maybe even as good of an apology as you're going to get. “We use this, we solve our problem, and then we burn it. Deal?”

He nods.


End file.
